Baby Moses Is Doing Just Fine With Another’s Heart

The infant known as Baby Moses, who underwent the world’s third infant-to-infant heart transplant a month ago, is making excellent progress as the longest living survivor of such surgery, his doctor said Thursday.

A videotape released by Loma Linda University Medical Center showed the pajama-clad infant yawning, drinking infant formula from a bottle, sucking on a pacifier and grabbing the ear of a small teddy bear.

“It’s been quite a thrilling thing to watch this baby develop,” said Dr. Leonard Bailey, who performed the transplant on Nov. 20 when the child was 4 days old. “The baby has made excellent progress.”

Bailey commented on Baby Moses while briefing reporters on his Journal of the American Medical Assn. report on Baby Fae, the newborn who received a transplanted baboon’s heart in a 1984 operation also performed by Bailey.

The pediatric surgeon declined to predict when the child might be able to go home. The hospital has said that Baby Moses is receiving drugs to prevent rejection of his new heart.